Beyond truth vs. fiction in the media

Media literacy is crucial for healthy societies. Rotary members are teaching people to think critically about what they see and read

By Etelka Lehoczky

The first day at a new school can be disorienting for any teenager. But your first day at Virginia Hall High School is even stranger than most. Your grandfather claims he used to be a spy, your sister accuses some students of locking her in a closet, and everyone says a monster is stalking the hallways.

What is happening? Is any of this true? Instead of rushing off to fight the monster, you read about the weird recent events in the school newspaper. You ask yourself: Do these sources provide multiple pieces of evidence for their claims? Could they possibly be earning money because of what they’re saying? Do their stories cast a negative light on people who disagree with them?

You ask all these questions because you’re actually playing a video game designed to increase your media literacy. Co-created by Anahita Dalmia, a member of the Rotary Club of Newport Beach, California, USA, the game Agents of Influence is being developed to help 11- to 13-year-olds think critically about what they see on social media and in the news.

“We’re teaching kids to understand media bias, logical fallacies, and confirmation bias. We teach things like reading closely — tools you can use to determine what to trust online,” says Dalmia, the founder and CEO of game developer Alterea Inc.

Experts interviewed for this story recommended several nonpartisan fact-checking sites. Here are a few:

PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning site run by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists
Full Fact, a London, England-based factchecking site
Snopes, a source of information on urban legends and online rumors since 1994
FactCheck.org, a nonprofit project of the Annenberg Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, USA

Dalmia, a third-generation Rotarian, says the game’s approach was inspired partly by Rotary’s Four-Way Test.

“The first question is, ‘Is it the truth?’ And there’s a reason that’s the first question,” Dalmia says. “If it’s not the truth, you cannot make a strong judgment call based on any of the other questions, because you’re starting on an unstable foundation.”

“An unstable foundation” is one way to describe the current state of the media landscape. Experts say we’re exposed to far more media than ever before. That includes both misinformation (unintentional untruths) and disinformation (deliberate falsehoods meant to mislead people). Although many outlets are responsible and credible, figuring out what to believe can take time and effort.

“Before the internet, if I went to get a newspaper, it was run by journalists for whom truth was an important standard. Of course newspapers were biased. But today, people who want to believe things just post stuff,” says Alan Dennis, a professor of internet systems at Indiana University.

“There are active disinformation campaigns by foreign governments designed to influence voters in democratic countries. The actors have become much more sophisticated, and they have learned quite a bit about what messaging works.”

People are aware of this problem, and they say they want to become savvier about the media they consume. A study released this year found that about seven in 10 Americans were interested in learning how to better distinguish between true and false information online. But media literacy is more than just separating fact from fiction.

“We need to be able to judge things like, ‘What’s the bias behind it? Who created it? Who’s benefiting from it?’ So there’s not a simple fix here,” says Jeff Share, a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a co-author of “The Critical Media Literacy Guide.” “We need to slow down and investigate. It might mean it’s going to take me a couple more minutes, but I can go to some different sources. I can also recognize that some are more legitimate than others.”

Video game developer Anahita Dalmia at the 2022 Rotary International Convention in Houston

Training storytellers

Many people believe that ideological biases and financial interests guide major news outlets’ coverage, says global grant scholar Alex Freeman, who is pursuing a master’s degree in global media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“It’s one of the big reasons that people have turned against media, but I think it’s an overcorrection,” Freeman says. “A lot of people have turned to independent journalists who are more willing to incorporate their own personal experience into their reporting. But without a traditional media apparatus — without standard practices for ensuring accuracy — it’s hard to know who’s trustworthy.”

Still, independent voices can be crucial in places where media organizations lack funding or are restricted by repressive governments. When Rotary Peace Fellow Thomas Sithole realized his hometown in Zimbabwe was ignored by major media outlets, he launched a community radio station. Then he founded the Zimbabwe Centre for Media and Information Literacy to teach people to think more critically and tell their own stories effectively. He believes the two skills are intertwined.

“We tell citizens how to arm themselves against disinformation and misinformation,” he says. The Centre also trains citizen journalists and other content creators, teaching skills like fact-checking and ensuring balance in a story.

“We’re trying to build a movement across the region, because we see that there is no appetite from our governments to push for policies that support media and information literacy among citizens,” Sithole says.

The threat of artificial intelligence

Even as he trains an army of storytellers, Sithole worries that the arrival of artificial intelligence will make it easier to create and spread disinformation.

“For unsuspecting citizens, it’s creating a lot of challenges,” he says. “It becomes very difficult now to tell whether a piece of content is true or false, especially if it’s in the form of videos or images. It’s something that is really a challenge even to the professional journalist.”

Some believe the key is educating younger media consumers. Erin McNeill meets many students through her job as CEO of the U.S.-based nonprofit Media Literacy Now, and she’s heartened by what she finds. “AI is definitely making it harder to identify good and credible sources,” McNeill says. But she says people can use the same skills to analyze human-generated and AI-generated content.

“Young people are so creative and smart. We’re educating them so they can rise to the challenge,” she says. “They’re going to find solutions as long as they’re given the skills and the education they need.”

The same belief animates Dalmia as she continues to develop and promote Agents of Influence. She has presented the game to numerous Rotary clubs and hopes Rotarians will encourage their local schools to use it. “This started as a passion project, but there was a huge demand from parents who were concerned about how social media was shaping their kids’ perspectives and interactions with the outside world,” Dalmia says. “The resounding feedback we’ve gotten is, ‘Can I have this for my kid who thinks TikTok is a reliable source of information?’”